Bohachi Bushido: Code of the Forgotten Eight

There are more bare breasts than you can shake a stick at in "Boachi Bushido: Code of the Forgotten Eight". In fact it seems like there is scarcely a scene in the movie in which female nudity is not depicted, usually from many naked or topless women in the scene at once. Some of them are quite beautiful, but I didn't find it erotic.

The violence is overrated. Mostly it's just sword swipes with people falling over, and maybe a bit of blood, which of course looks like bright red paint. It's only in the climactic scene that legs and heads are chopped off, and you can clearly see the strings attached to these prop-body parts as they fly, or rather hang, in the air.

I'm not entirely sure what the movie was about. I get that it was something to do with a joyless samurai assassin who was hired by a guy who owns a cadre of cooze, but other than that, I don't really know. The guy who hires the anti-hero is pretty damn ugly, which black teeth, a pig like face, and an ability to talk without moving his mouth, apparently.

Most of the movie is just girls baring their breasts, walking around naked, being "stolen" by men, or molesting them. In one scene they molest a Western woman, who is tied to a bench, and then fight over her, saying they each wanted to taste her body.

There's no full frontal nudity in the movie though. Japan has always been weird like that. A country synonymous with tentacle rape, sharking, gokkun, futanari... but pubic hair and genitals are a bridge too far, to this day.

I still enjoyed the movie. It is not made without skill, and has a crazy, phantasmagoric feeling to it, like Jodorowsky.

A sober and very well-made story about some of the dark clans that moved behind the shadows of the shogunate in feudal Japan ...

Both the fight of the first scene, and the end are great, especially that brutal closure. Liters of blood, enough sex without reaching vulgarity and Tetsuro Tamba making a dark, nihilistic and surprising Ronin in search of the path of death ...

What more you can ask?

It's been a while since I first laid eyes on this film, I now feel it's my duty to share my feelings and views on what happened here. Firstly, if the opening scene does not grab you and slam you into your seat, then you don't really enjoy Grindhouse Chanbara! From the vivid colors to the stylish camera angles, to the Badassery of the lead character Shino, Bohachi - Clan of the forgotten 8 is a masterpiece of sleaze that no male should miss! Nudging elbows with the Baby Cart series, Bohachi adds tons more skin to get your blood pumping even more. Many scenes are reminiscent of a comic, same style as Baby Cart. Violent, while not going over the top reaching gorebore. There is plenty red stuff spraying to keep your utmost attention. It screams style, cult and just looks so damn beautiful doing it. Shino could be related to Ogami Itto, or even Charles Bronson in fact! This film may be wildly off the wall, but it takes it's self dead serious, I believe. All you men, next time girls night out comes around, treat yourself to this beast!

Bohachi Bushido is the story of an ex-samurai named Shiro. Believing life and death to be the same hell, he tries to kill himself by jumping into a river. A very hard man to kill, Shiro is revived by members of the Clan of the Forgotten Eight- an organization of men and women who have discarded god, servitude, loyalty, trust, propriety, justice, conscience, and shame. The Forgotten Eight run Japan's cruel sex industry and they recruit Shiro to rid them of their competition. Shiro agrees to work for them, more out of boredom than any real convictions.

So, we have a bad ass samurai running through the sexual underworld of 17th century Edo directed by Teruro Ishii for Toei studios in 1973. That means blood, lots of nudity, perhaps some misogyny, a couple moments of brilliant cinematography, and maybe just a little more nudity. Not a great movie, but definitely a lot of fun!

Tetsuro Tamba plays a wonderful "Shiro", both pained and bemused by the hell of life. Gorou Ibuki as "Kesazo Shirakubi", the Bohachi second in command, has a great chemistry with Tamba. Ibuki would pretty much play the "Shiro" role in another Bohachi film a few years later as a similar (but sicker) life loathing ex-samurai in "Bohachi Bushido: Saburai" with the lovely Reiko Ike as a pistol wielding Bohachi woman.

Pursued by the authorities, rōnin assassin Shiro (Tetsurô Tanba) is taken in by the immoral Bohachi clan, who use the warrior's awesome sword-fighting skills to help them seize control of the local prostitution industry. When no longer of any use, the evil Bohachi leader tries to dispose of Shiro by getting him addicted to opium and caging him up with a syphilitic whore; but even stoned out of his gourd, the assassin proves to be a formidable opponent...

I'm of the opinion that, like cyborgs and dwarfs (and cyborg dwarfs), gratuitous female nudity and gore can make virtually any film more entertaining; director Teruo Ishii clearly agrees, loading Bohachi, a delightfully sleazy Chanbara movie, with countless naked Japanese cuties and very bloody sword-fights, which means that when the screen isn't full of tits (no muff: this being a Japanese film the ladies keep their hands in front of their nether regions at all times), there's severed body-parts flying everywhere instead. Sometimes, Ishii even combines the two, having his naked Bohachi women whipping out weapons and partaking in the violence themselves—something I'm all in favour of.

The name of the game here is clearly 'exploitation excess' meaning that on top of the all the wonderful big-breasted Asian babes and bright crimson blood, viewers can also expect a smidgen of torture, a smattering of lesbianism, and some opium-fuelled sex (with hero Shiro entertaining not one woman, but four!), all realised with hyper-stylised direction that uses strong experimental lighting effects to really add to that cool 70s vibe.

7.5 out of 10, rounded up to 8 for IMDb.